WE Design Studios creates identities, brands, websites and graphics in Western Massachusetts and beyond.

Transparent Gradient Tutorial
Last week I found myself having to relearn an old trick and realized it would be a good one to share with all of you. Making a transparent gradient in Illustrator is pretty simple and can create a nice effect for certain projects. Follow the steps below to make your own transparent gradient.
Step [...]Read Full Article →

As lovers of typography and hand lettering, David and I are always looking for new and interesting ways to make lettering exciting. Recently we learned about creating invisible ink using milk and revealing it with an iron. It turned out to be pretty easy (and really exciting) to do so I decided to share the [...]Read Full Article →

GIFs Made Simple
GIFs are everywhere these days and they’re hilarious. As it turns out, they are also very easy to make. Earlier this month David and I created one to celebrate the New Year and it was really simple to do.
There are countless websites out there that will make a GIF for you for free [...]Read Full Article →

Make Your Hand Lettering Into A Vector Graphic
A few weeks back we created a tutorial on hand lettering and had some requests for how to turn that hand lettering into a digital vector graphic. So we’ve put together a tutorial to explain how to do it. Just in time for Halloween, here is our treat [...]Read Full Article →

Just A Few Simple Steps
There are a number of ways to create a repeating dot pattern in illustrator. This tutorial will show you how with just a few simple steps. Let’s get started!
Step One
Using the rectangle tool, make a small square on your page. It can be whatever color you like, or have no fill [...]Read Full Article →

Reviving A Lost Art
Back in the 1950’s, practically every sign you saw was hand-lettered, each one painstakingly crafted by a highly trained sign painter. As the years rolled on and technology advanced, signs and advertisements were designed on computers and printed on inexpensive vinyl. These rather ugly signs took over, which made hand-painted signs all [...]Read Full Article →

Drawing from history
Last Saturday Laura and I led our sketch tour throughout the bustling old hutong neighborhoods found around old Beijing. We had previously organized these tours with The Hutong while living in China’s capital back in 2011 and it was nice to roam around the busy back alleys and capture the details and essence [...]Read Full Article →

The other day Laura and I visited a national drug store chain to get some passport-size pictures made. We were running through our travel checklist for our big business adventures in China and Southeast Asia and needed some extra snapshots for visas. To our astonishment we learned the going price for two pictures was a [...]Read Full Article →